Waterbury service out for a while

Waterbury - Bridgeport service is out for probably a month or so. The excuse here is lack of equipment due to snow, ice whatever. In my opinion, this is a sign of failure on the part of the State of Connecticut. Get those idle FL-9's back on the road, they did an excellent job in the snow for years, find some idle cars and get this branch back in full operation the way it should be.
Here is a link with the bad news of failure.

http://www.rep-am.com/articles/2011/02/ ... 111508.txt

Friday, February 4, 2011 8:09 AM EST
Metro-North suspends rail service on Waterbury line
Rail service on the Waterbury branch of Metro-North Railroad will be suspended for a least a month starting Saturday. Buses will operate on the train schedule, stopping in all seven towns served by the branch line.

Noel Weaver

Correct the FL-9's are fully inspected (water drained) sitting shut down in New Haven and over 20 spare rebuilt Mafersa cars are sitting in Cedar Hill.
Despite the Mafersa's not being good on Third Rail. 9 Bombardiers could be freed up of Waterbury and Danbury shuttles.

It is a complete waste to have so many engines and coaches just sitting around when MN is cutting service due to "no available equpment".

Gentlemen, the "Metro North New Haven line reduced winter schedule" (released earlier this week) doesn't show Waterbury service out, so things may not be as bad as the media would make us think. I have a copy of this. Go look at http://www.mta.info/mnr/html/planning/s ... edules.htm

Bussing will be in place on the Waterbury while the reduced schedule is in effect.

Clean Cab wrote:It is a complete waste to have so many engines and coaches just sitting around when MN is cutting service due to "no available equpment".

Well, there's two current problems, and one future problem.

Problem #1 is that somebody went to a class, read an article, or got convinced by a bean counter that it is wasteful to maintain adequate backup for emergencies or even routine weather-related issues. As a result, there isn't any. It's not just Metro-North, it's also Amtrak (whose attitude seems to be lately that stranding trains is just business as usual, so long as nobody breaks any rules in the process) and many other public and private sector entities.

Problem #2 is that to admit that Problem #1 exists would make some people look stupid. It's much easier to cancel a few trains, or service to an entire branch line and blame it on the weather than it is to admit their mistake, fire up the FL9's and have them strut up and down the branch lines as a daily reminder of making the doubtful decision to run unprepared. The fact that the FL9's are mostly ready, good in the snow and could have been actually scheduled for winter backup years ago would make that reminder even worse.

Problem #3 is for next year, as the Northeast weather pattern is expected to maintain - and perhaps even intensify - over the next several years, so Problems #1 and #2 will be with us for a while, as the FL9's will continue to sit on the sidelines for a while too.

The Danbury News-Times goes into somewhat more detail than does the Waterbury Republican:

http://www.newstimes.com/news/article/M ... 997707.php

"Last year, there were 4,880 scheduled train runs on the Waterbury line. Of that number, 67 scheduled trains were substituted with buses, according to Aaron Donovan, Metro North spokesman. So far this year, and just during January, 92 of the 395 scheduled trains were substituted with buses, he said. "That's 23.3 percent," he said, adding the severe winter weather is to blame."

so your saying the back locomotives and cars are sitting spare as backup to a possible backup fleet ??
now I get it ....
Govenor Molloy besides having problems with contract reading, fact finding and other stuff can now add that he can't count.
The Waterbury fleet consist daily of one Mini bomb(3 cars) and a 7 car train, the SLE equipment not counted as it can't be used as mainline train.

DutchRailnut wrote:so your saying the back locomotives and cars are sitting spare as backup to a possible backup fleet ??
now I get it ....

What I'm saying is that you probably won't get it - backup, that is. But not because the backup isn't there.

If MN is running fewer trains "due to weather", that also means they're overstaffed. What happens to the crews on those Waterbury trains? Are they laid off for the time period, or are others?

Conductors still ride the buses, as for engineer they hold him standby, incase rail service resumes.
They can't abolish jobs , the bumping would devestate the railroad.
With reduced service as it is there will be some bumping on Monday.

I think this winter was a textbook example of what a perfect storm does to the RR. From the very beginning reducing mainline capacity with track work. Since the RR had already planned the new M8 cars being in service between Dec - late January, I am almost sure they didn't keep an ample backstock of parts for their current fleet in case it needed repair since they foretasted newer cars to already be in service. Lots of cars that weren't suitable for the lead ends of the consist for defects were buried and never fixed (meaning if you had a 6 car train with 3 pairs, the middle pair was originally shopped and never fixed.) Add the ferocious winter the Northeast is currently having and you have what we have now. Crippled fleet, reduced service, combined or canceled trains. Nobody could have foreseen how bad of a winter we were going to have until it came, even the blizzard after Christmas.

Many forget the financial health the MTA, CDOT, NYS and the state of CT are in. They are trying to reduce their budget, more specifically the operating costs. Comes to no surprise with all of this snow with NY failing to call snow emergency during blizzard where we saw dismal snow removal in NYC. It was penny smart dollar stupid. The RR took a gamble it appears to me expecting the M8's to have finished all testing and have had several cars accepted by now and not spending money on replacement parts for cars they knew would be scraped in the near future. I am sure CT was hoping as well so they could increase tariff fares. But that hasn't happened yet.

Trainer, it is easy to critique after the outcome of something like this. What could have been done better, what should or should have not been done. But until you are the person relied on making a decision that would affect thousands of people, your budget and more importantly your job it's not as easy as what you may think. I'm with the above posters with engaging the FL9's back into service and having some of the Mafersa cars used from storage since that's just money sitting there doing nothing. Could only imagine how much the buses are costing the company.

The Railroad never stated that testing would be completed, it was CDOT and Commuter Council that rushed to statments in news media.
As for spare parts any railroad when fleet gets to end of usefull life will run out of spare parts.
Some can be rebuilt like traction motors and blowers but as was seen with ACM and later the M-1a the end of fleet will slowly deteriorate, cause smaller stuff is no longer fixed and burried in consist.
Whas this perfect storm, or was 1996 or is one next week.
Fact remains no one will spend oodles of money on a car they will sell or scrap.
Fact remains the M2's are 10 years past scrapping, as for M-8's they were ordered in 2006 designed fairly quik but production takes time.
I predicted at time of ordering that first cars would take 8 years to get in service, as have most commuter cars from time of order.
were only 5 years from ordering, so are well ahead of scheme.
The M-8 is a complicated car, Its Federal Railway Adimistration that demands any train not used elsewhere on US railroads to be tested according set standards.
This process can not be rushed or cheated on, or it will bite the commuters in ass, either money or lives.

Steamboat Willie wrote: Trainer, it is easy to critique after the outcome of something like this. What could have been done better, what should or should have not been done. But until you are the person relied on making a decision that would affect thousands of people, your budget and more importantly your job it's not as easy as what you may think.

Steamboat Willie, I know that it's easy to second-guess, but in my hospital job where I DO make the decisions, I have backups on everything I need to get the job done. Some of it is old equipment, some is borrowed, all of it takes up space that I don't really have, but the excuse of not being prepared doesn't cut it when s%&#! happens and lives and the 9-figure budget are on the line (make a habit of cancelling procedures and you won't last long). We take "perfect storms" for granted and we don't let them mess up our business model - they are part of it.

My point wasn't to second-guess MN for not being ready for a bad winter, although it shouldn't have surprised anyone back in July that January was on its way. My point is that those FL-9's won't be brought back into service because to do so would embarrass whoever mothballed them in the first place without regard for their possible use as emergency backup. From what Noel and Dutch say, all it would take is a telephone call to get them on the way to rolling again. Will it happen? I'm not questioning the past decision, but the present and future ones, since under the present model this is going to happen again, and again, and....

When the New York Central ran on these lines, they used to advertise that they were part of their "ALL Weather" map. "Winter or Summer, storm or fair, we'll get you there - in dependable streamliner comfort". Advertising hyperbole aside, did THEY budget for backup in case of inclement weather? I'm thinking that maybe they did.

Trainer wrote:When the New York Central ran on these lines...THEY budget for backup in case of inclement weather? I'm thinking that maybe they did.

Well first, the Waterbury Branch was New Haven not NYC. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "budget for" but New York Central had a locomotive fleet of two thousand or more units. Metro-North has what? 50-55?

Many of Central's general service units -- like Geeps and RS3s -- used mostly in freight service had steam boilers though how well the boilers were maintained after about 1958-59 is questionable.

I agree it's a tough situation. As for using the stored FL-9s I think possibly the problem might be, what if they breakdown? Where do you get the spare parts from?

Busing on the Waterbury Branch goes way way back. I remember trying to ride it for years and every doggone time I went it was a bus!

Given the conditions and the ridership, I think it might be prudent to bustitute. I can't fault them.

As for FL-9 parts all are still available from EMD, don't forget the 6 CDOT FL-9's were completely rebuilt with 1996 catalog parts.

My wife, from Waterbury, gives me this reference.
http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Metr ... 997288.php Sorry, I see it's been posted already.

I rode this rather third world train when I first met her (she didn't know there was a train). It deserves new equipment, better stations and publicity.